TB: So there’s no access right now to speak of. Can you elaborate on that?

Kenneth Melson: There has been some access but it’s limited. We’re going to be working on expanding that. And that’s very important because part of the issue is the information that we actually get off the weapons. We have to have the information to do a full and complete trace. And as you know, we’re also going to be expanding in December the Spanish language E-trace, which will allow them to more easily electronically trace their weapons through ATF.TB: How would you guess the untraced weapons over there will turn out to be from, if and when they are finally traced?

Kenneth Melson: That’s hard to say now. It’s really speculation and you’ve heard the statistic that of the weapons successfully traced, 90 percent came from the U.S. That’s not a scientifically acceptable statistical sample. But looking at that, there is a probability that a good percentage of those [untraced weapons still in Mexican vaults] came from the U.S. as well. There was a recent case that we had of a seizure in Mexico where when we traced those guns a very high percentage came from the U.S. as well. So it will not be surprising that a lot of guns came from the U.S.

TB: How would you assess so far the effectiveness of the ATF’s new deployments to Texas and elsewhere?

Kenneth Melson: We haven’t completed the 120-day period for our team but we’re very close and when we finish we’ll do an assessment of them. But a preliminary indication is that they’ve been very successful. We’ve been able to do almost 1,000 inspections of FFLs (federal firearms licensees who retail guns), which is just tremendous down here because our number of inspections had been every four, five, six or seven years and now we’ve got 1,000 of them inspected. And they have generated leads to other law enforcement agencies through these inspections. And taking up some of the leads that were uninvestigated before we went down, we’ve generated a number of cases that have been referred to prosecution and referred out to other agencies for investigation. And so I think you will see that the surge down here in Texas has accomplished something and it really shows what we could do if we could maintain that surge, not only here but expand that concept over to Arizona and California and New Mexico. I think some of the two measures of success will be the number of prosecutions completed and successful, but also the number of weapons recovered and specifically the numbers of inspections at FFL. Because that is a significant part of stopping the flow of weapons. I think the FFL inspections are very important in stopping the flow of weapons, as well as the investigation part.TB: What’s been the reaction from the FFLs to all of these inspections?

Kenneth Melson: I haven’t heard much of a complaint. They understand that we do inspections. That’s part of our job. That’s part of our law. I have not heard any huge complaint from the FFL community. Many of them have not been inspected for years and years.

Webb: We have not had one FFL complaint as far as what we’re doing. We have had complaints from other sources as far as where we’re going and what we’re doing, things like that.

Kenneth Melson: As always, we try to go in to the FFLs and try to be very professional as far as where we go and what we’re looking for. I think the lack of complaints shows how professional our people are.

TB: A lot’s been said about improved relations between our side and Mexico on this issue, for instance signing agreements like this one today. But what else have we not talked about that still needs to improve over there in terms of helping you and them interdict more weapons?

Kenenth Melson: I think the next step to improvement is the creation and signing of our document of principals and our protocols as to how evidence is handled in Mexico so we can use that evidence in U.S. prosecutions, but also getting access to crime scenes and so forth. So we have early access to weapons. We do that a lot now. Right now we have our border agents who will respond immediately across the border to these violent incidents and work very closely with the Mexicans at the scene. By doing that, we can get them more timely information about the nature of these weapons or prior incidents they’ve been used in.

TB: Has any evidence emerged that the source of weapons sales has moved inland since this ATF deployment to the border areas?

Kenneth Melson: There certainly are source states inland. I can’t say they’ve developed since our deployment down to Texas. But the point we try to make from time to time is the smuggling of guns across the southwest border is not just an issue for the four border states. It is an issue for the entire country. We’re finding that states like Washington and Florida and others that are removed from our southwest border are source states as well. I can tell you from other enforcement areas that when you put the squeeze in one area, the bad guys are smart enough to know they should move to another area. So we expect that the more we concentrate on the southwest border, the more we’ll have to also concentrate on some of the interior states.

TB: Is that being tracked? Where are they moving into the interior?

Kenneth Melson: We have a document that shows what the interior states are: Washington, Florida, Georgia, Michigan …TB: Has this occurred since the redeployment?

Kenneth Melson: We can’t say it has occurred since the redeployment

Webb: The only feedback we have right now — and it’s hard to measure this — is that we’ve gotten calls from gun dealers that go to the gun shows, especially from the Houston area, that the gun shows are squeaky clean, that everybody knows we’re there. They haven’t seen the unlicensed dealers, the crooked folks everybody knows. We feel we’ve pushed them to other places, but it’s one of those intangibles that we really can’t measure right now. We’ll just have to see. The majority of the guns are being bought as the result of straw purchasing. That’s what most of our investigations are showing.

Kenneth Melson: If two weeks ago they moved to another state, if they’re bought from gun shows we won’t know that they were smuggled to Mexico until they’re recovered in Mexico. So it’ll be awhile after our deployment ends that we’ll see the result of them going to other places in the U.S. So the stats we have with respect to source states were generated before and during the deployment. It takes awhile to know the trend because we have to kind of reverse engineer the process. We have to recover the gun first before we can determine where it came from and how it was smuggled.

TB: How do you respond to this idea that’s out there all the time that if you throw as many resources as you possibly want to at this problem, you’re till never going to stop this flow? They’ll get it from somewhere else.

Kenneth Melson: Well, i don’t think that’s completely true. I think we can ultimately control the flow of guns to Mexico. The harder issue is how about the guns coming up from other countries other than the U.S. That may be a longer challenge. But what we’re seeing is greater cooperation with other countries like Guatemala. We are now working with them on tracing a lot of the guns seized in Guatemala. If we can shut down the source of guns going to Guatemala, that may shut down the guns going through Guatemala to Mexico.

TB: What’s known about American guns going to Guatemala? Talk about that.

Kenneth Melson: We don’t have the trace results back but we have recently been working with them to trace a number of guns that they have. We’re in the process of tracing 6,000 guns right now. But we don’t have any statistical analysis now.TB: Are you talking about military grade weapons or from American gun stores?

Kenneth Melson: I think these are a variety of guns seized down there, in crimes or other events down there in Guatemala. We’re going to find that just like with drugs they’re going to look for different ways to get guns into Mexico. You can almost use the same methods you use for drug dealing for gun smuggling. There’s a lot of ways to get into Mexico other than our border.

TB: What about military weaponry? You see these rocket launchers, grenades, and machine guns all over the place.

Kenneth Melson: We have no information at this point that any of these weapons or explosives showing up down there are coming from U.S. military bases or military personnel at this point.

TB: Where are they coming from? What do you know about that?

Kenneth Melson: They may be coming from other countries. If they’re military grade weapons, they may have been part of a sale to another country.TB: Is that an ATF jurisdiction anyway?

Kenneth Melson: Probably not. It wouldn’t be our jurisdiction. If they were sold in another country and expropriated from there, that’s outside our jurisdiction.

TB: Is it safe to conclude that of the total seizure of weapons in Mexico that the military grade weapons make up a small or large faction?

Kenneth Melson: It’s difficult. Most of the guns traced so far are guns that can be purchased in the U.S.

Yes, some guns are being smuggled into Mexico from the U.S. Most are handguns.

But, handguns are being illegally trafficked from state to state and from the U.S. to Canada.

It should come as no surprise that guns are smuggled into Mexico.

But, the problem being portrayed by the U.S. media and our government is not as it seems.

You see, Mexico doesn’t allow ownership of most firearms, so ordinary Mexican people seeking self-protection will find a way to get them into Mexico.

As for the drug cartels operating in the border towns along the U.S., they have other sources for their weapons and have become the prime supplier within Mexico.
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Reference:http://www.gunnewsdaily.com/rw807.html

Excerpt:
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Ms. McLemore noted that while individuals may possess and transfer machine guns lawfully registered prior to May 19, 1986, federal law prohibits the manufacture of new machine guns unless they are intended for distribution to local, state or federal agencies.
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To think that any US law is going to prevent these drug cartels from acquiring weapons on the international black market is delusional.

Besides, the guns in Mexico that came from the US are there because laws have already been broken. It’s hard do see how another law is going to change anything – except for law abiding citizens, that is.

“Duh…. gee, Tennessee, where did all those bad guys in the drug market come from?”

“We made them with Prohibition, Chumley!”

Talking about gun smuggling is a secondary problem caused by the primary problem: prohibition. Its time to give up on this failed policy, which has never worked wherever its been tried. Prisons. Communist Russia. Communist China. All these places have much stronger penalties for drug posession/use than a free citizen faces in the USA and they still have as bad or worse a drug problem.

The BS from this child run administration is never ending. Case and point, many of you have seen the medias coverage showing the weapons seized supposedly from the US. Any half wit could see that fully auto M4′s,M-16′S, and gernade lauchers that were displayed didn’t come from the local gun shop or gun shows. Just another attack on our constitutional rights. Don’t forget to check out HR45 (I believe that’s the correct #)of the new senate bill,VERY SCARY! Fellow citizens,they want our guns,our healthcare,and our freedom.I can’t let this happen,I hope you feel the same way!Oh yeah,trust info from the Mexican government? A Chicago pre-schooler knows better than that!Vote all these brain dead politians out in 2010 and 2012!

The fact is that the number one supplier of arms to the Mexcan drug cartels is the Mexican military. The machine guns, grenade launchers and the like being confiscated are simply not available on the open matket here in the US.

The Mexican government is systematically rubbing out it’s drug market competitors. The Mexican governmrnt is CORRUPT to the core. This is not an effort to eradicate drug trafficking, but rather to eradicate any competition. Obama has found a willing partner in an insidious attempt to curtail 2nd amendment right that Americans enjoy. The ATF is a willing partner in this gambit.

Well Todd, just what on earth is an “assault type firearm,”?….Considering that “assault” is a behaviour, not an object, your definition could apply to anything that goes “bang”….To imply that, 1) Mexican politicians/military/police are honest people, fighting those evil firearms coming in from the U.S., and 2) Drug cartels are buying thousands of full auto rifles (the true definition of an assault rifle), hand grenades, RPG`s and hundred`s of thousand`s of rounds of 5.56mm from Texas and other U.S. points, is, at best, a lie….

The best way to keep U.S. guns out of the Mexican drug cartels is to shut down the border and arrest and deport anyone trying to cross in illegally. These cartels couldn’t exist if they didn’t have easy access to the largest drug market in the world. It would also stop the self-induced human suffering in our own country as well. And we shouldn’t change a single damn thing about our 2nd ammendment rights. If anything we should expand them in order to protect ourselves from these Mexican low lifes.

I seriously doubt if all those guns in the Mexican vaults are purchased in the U.S. If they were, the Mexicans would have trumpeted that. As they haven’t, it is unlikely. What is likely is that all those guns are from elsewhere and prove Obama and the ATFE as a bunch of liars and anti-gun zealots.

Somebody would take over – I think thats the payoff or endgame. In fact, I wouldnt doubt if some of Obama’s old BLACK gangster benefactors from Chicago were orchestrating this fascination with confiscating guns from the Mexicans. Problems associated witht the drug trade are not new, but when it was a white conservative problem, no one gave a spit.

I have a good idea. Make drugs legal. Thats right. You go to the drug store and buy anything you desire, from the stuff sold on the street to that the doctors prescribe. If you want to know how to use it, go to the doctor. Eliminate the DEA and the war on drugs. Now am I a hardcore dope fiend. No I am a doctor with over 30 years in practice and sick of seeing terrorism funded by our governments idiotic policies and the gangs getting rich the same way. Where does the government get the right to tell us what to do with our bodies and prevent easy access to pain and stress relieving meds. Everything from AIDS to high hospital cost to gangs proliferating to terror funding can be traced to the stupid drug policies we have. Will this easy access to drugs make more addicts? No, they get the stuff if they want it. It is only those that uphold the law that don’t receive medications in a timely manner and are denied their freedom of choice and persuit of happiness.

So I can just go to my gun shop and buy those fully automatic assault type weapons there?
I’ve been looking for some so I can be a straw buyer for when them druggies come over the wall.
I can sell them then.
Or maybe I ship them to mejico to the drug guys I know well.
The ignorance they foist on us is boggling.